Google News for quality news sources

I wrote an article at SEOmoz about the usefulness of Google News for traffic and organic link development.

Shortly after, I submitted a news site to Google News - and had it immediately rejected, with the submissions reviewer clearly stating they weren’t going to explain why.

I figured there may be a misperception that I was advocating Google News for spamming, so quickly wrote up a following article: How to write a quality Google News site.

The bottom line is - there’s a mantra: “Write good content, and they* will come”

* traffic and natural links

Trouble is, with so much competition online these days in the same vertical, it’s hard to give good content the attention it deserves.

My take is - “Good news content = great content.”

Therefore if you focus on developing great content - ie, news - then it’s a useful way to develop that traffic and natural linkage.

Ironically, I don’t have a business plan formed around news portal development. I simply figure it’s a good idea, and to develop the idea before deciding what I should actually do with it.

That’s why now my costs for employing qualified journalists and aspiring writers now outrips all my other company costs for my SEO company.

Yes, there’s potential link value from a quality news site - but Google’s algo’s make it pretty plain that a few mid-level news sites aren’t going to throw a huge amount of link love out.

However, what news sites can deliver is targeted traffic. The problem is, how to ensure visitors get the quality experience they want, as well as monetise it, when news publishing is continually undermined as a business model at present.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to try and develop great news sites in niche areas, and simply see what happens. Part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is simply being able to take risks, and invest in them, even without any clear future award.

As a webmaster, I simply love working with information, so I guess at worse it’s just an expensive hobby at present. :)